Changes

===Jeffrey Epstein===

===Jeffrey Epstein===

In August 2018, reporters at ''The New York Times'' and other publications received word Tesla founder [[Elon Musk]] was relying on [[Jeffrey Epstein]] to advise him on whom to consider hiring as board chair or chief executive.  Editors at the ''Times'' sent business columnist James Stewart to talk to Epstein. "I wondered why would Musk, if this is true, be using a registered sex offender to recruit new members to the board," Stewart recently told The Kicker, a podcast from the Columbia Journalism Review.

In August 2018, reporters at ''The New York Times'' and other publications received word Tesla founder [[Elon Musk]] was relying on [[Jeffrey Epstein]] to advise him on whom to consider hiring as board chair or chief executive.  Editors at the ''Times'' sent business columnist James Stewart to talk to Epstein. Stewart wrote, "He said that criminalizing sex with teenage girls was a cultural aberration and that at times in history it was perfectly acceptable."<ref>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html</ref>  "I wondered why would Musk, if this is true, be using a registered sex offender to recruit new members to the board," Stewart recently told The Kicker, a podcast from the Columbia Journalism Review.

Stewart was not the editors' first choice to interview Epstein further.  Initially, they had asked Landon Thomas Jr., a veteran financial correspondent who had been at the ''Times'' for 16 years.  Thomas knew Epstein fairly well — having first written about him in 2002. For a 2008 profile, Thomas had traveled to Epstein's private isle in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  The article largely presented Epstein as someone who solicited prostitutes, not committed sex crimes against minors. Federal agents had by then identified several dozen possible victims. The piece ran just before Epstein submitted to authorities in Florida for incarceration.  It included this passage: "As his legal troubles deepened, Mr. Epstein gazed at the azure sea and the lush hills of St. Thomas in the distance, poked at a lunch of crab and rare steak prepared by his personal chef, and tried to explain how his life had taken such a turn," Thomas wrote. "He likened himself to Gulliver shipwrecked among the diminutive denizens of Lilliput."  

Stewart was not the editors' first choice to interview Epstein further.  Initially, they had asked Landon Thomas Jr., a veteran financial correspondent who had been at the ''Times'' for 16 years.  Thomas knew Epstein fairly well — having first written about him in 2002. For a 2008 profile, Thomas had traveled to Epstein's private isle in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  The article largely presented Epstein as someone who solicited prostitutes, not committed sex crimes against minors. Federal agents had by then identified several dozen possible victims. The piece ran just before Epstein submitted to authorities in Florida for incarceration.  It included this passage: "As his legal troubles deepened, Mr. Epstein gazed at the azure sea and the lush hills of St. Thomas in the distance, poked at a lunch of crab and rare steak prepared by his personal chef, and tried to explain how his life had taken such a turn," Thomas wrote. "He likened himself to Gulliver shipwrecked among the diminutive denizens of Lilliput."